The Muses of a Banished Prince
by fallendeathlord
Summary: Zuko's thoughts and actions, largely in regards to a certain waterbender, during Crossroads of Destiny, based off the prompt: Muse. Not exactly romantic; more of a character analysis. Written mostly as an exercise. Constructive criticism is appreciated.
1. Voice

**Voice**

Swimming in the frigid water of the north pole, Zuko decided, hadn't been that bad. Cold, very cold, and one mistake, one tiny error in judgment and he would have died. One of the absolute stupidest things he'd done too, or at least up there with running a Fire Nation blockade. No real plan, no stages to completion to speak of, nothing. He'd been able to focus though, every conscious thought was devoted towards making sure there _would_ be another stage in the _excursion_. Now, _now_ his thoughts were so jumbled up that he was recalling events that really had no bearing on the situation. At least he was pretty sure they didn't, but his train of thought had lead him there somehow. Something to do with Uncle, or the waterbender. He had to squint his eyes closed, as even thinking of them made his head swim. Wait, it was already swimming, because of them, and because of Azula.

He'd spoken with the waterbender, Katara, albeit briefly, and had shared things he never really spoke of with anyone. When she first saw him in the cavern she'd been angry, but she was also sad, scared, and hurt. He heard it behind in her voice, behind the anger and rage he displayed, even before he snapped at her and she was reduced to tears. The Fire Nation took her mother, and now he seemed poised to take away even more of her family.

Fear was a powerful weapon in battle, but they weren't fighting, and he really didn't want to fight. He too was sad scared and hurt. So he laid his blade before her; he apologized to her and sympathized with her, because he knew what it was like to lose a mother. To have other family members that you can't see, that you might never see again. She listened to him, she listened and understood. She spoke kindly, spoke of helping him, freeing him of his past. She knew him, who he was and what he'd done, and she had been willing to look past that. Only uncle had ever offered him that kind of compassion, and he was family. For more than three years Uncle was his only family, and even he seemed to be of the impression that Zuko should help the waterbender, help the Avatar.

He might have too, had Azula not placed her offer on the table. Return home, return to father, not in shame or defeat, but as a hero. Everything he'd struggled and fought for these past three years, it was finally within his reach. All he had to do, was betray the only people that knew and accepted him...

If he chose to help Azula he'd be helping his father, helping his people, but she'd always been a snake in the grass, manipulator, a liar. If he chose to help the Avatar he'd be helping the world, the people he'd seen suffering all around him, not to mention Uncle and the waterbender, but the Avatar was naive, and his sheer ignorance at times was enough to boil the prince's blood. He barely even knew the child. He was right back where he started; who does he side with? The liar or the idiot? When the liar stabs you in the back, you know it intentional. When the idiot stabs you... did he really want his death to be an unfortunate accident?

_While not really Zutara, I did write this in response to the March Zutara prompt: Muse. I'll also be honest in saying that I am a bit of a Zutara fan (Zuko taking the bolt of lightning won me over), but I'm also not confident in my ability to write any sort of romance. Instead I tried to dissect some canon and find something where Katara might have served as an inspiration for Zuko. Here I wanted to focus on Zuko's feelings after talking with Katara in the crystal catacombs but before he decided to side with his sister. When Zuko spoke with her during The Waterbending Scroll, he spoke of his lost honour, something Katara wouldn't exactly be familiar with. Speaking with her about lost family members, that she can understand. Some might ask if Katara was a Muse to Zuko, why didn't he side with the Avatar then and there? Simplest answer is, she was just a muse, one of many that eventually lead to his decision to turn against his father. Ursa, Iroh, Lee, Jet, Katara and many others were responsible for either showing Zuko what was good and right (in the case of the former two), and what was evil and wrong (the latter three). I'm not saying that Lee, Jet or Katara were evil or wrong, but rather what they had suffered because of the Fire Nation. Of those three the only person that still offered Zuko a hint of compassion _after _knowing who he is and where he came from, was Katara__. Thanks to everyone for reading._

_-fallendeathlord_


	2. Memory

**Memory**

He could recall Katara's motions, each and every delicate movement she had made, perfectly within his mind's eye. The motion of her arms, the sway of her shoulders, the pivoting of her waist, he remembered it all clearly. Recognizing another person's style, their tells, was one of the basic lessons Uncle had spent the better part of a year trying to hammer into his, evidently, thick skull. Eventually Zuko took the lesson to heart, if only initially because it was better than taking it to the head, or the chest, or the shoulder or somewhere else equally unpleasant. It was also a lesson he came to appreciate more than almost any other. Now, when Zuko fought, he also watched, and he learned, and he adapted. Every fight, every challenge, every obstacle, made him stronger, because he learned how to avoid and how to defeat everything the world threw at him; assuming of course he could survive it the first time. Never before, though, had he thought to turn it back.

Flame behaved differently from water; an obvious observation but one Zuko was determined to examine closer. Water wanted to collect and it wanted to flow; it just needed a gentle nudge in the right direction, subtle gestures made ripples that became waves. Fire wanted to spread, it had to be controlled or it would go wild; sharp movements, the pulling of the reins to remind which was the master. Water wanted to be guided, fire had to be; the same motions could govern both elements, but the urgency behind those motions differed. A waterbender remained almost constant like the moon pulling on the tides, but a firebender had accelerate, to catch the flame before it could escape.

He didn't copy the motions exactly, but then he didn't need to. He understood what Katara did, how she manipulated her element, and what he needed to do to get similar results. A punch or kick would only generate a quick short blast, because the motion was quick and short. Long circular motions that never really ended, but instead pushed out and pulled back and pushed out again, all in a single movement, that was what he had to perform.

The flames spewed forth from Zuko's hands and, as he settled into a similar stance to what he'd seen so many times, he was almost surprised as how fluid the fire actually was. A steady stream of flame that stretched and arched unlike any other firebending technique he'd used before. _Of course it's not_, he chided himself, _because it's not a firebending technique at all_. It worked though, and it's faired better than his other forms typically did against the airbender. The fight demanded his full attention, Zuko barely noticed how much clearer his thoughts had become when he was remembering face and motions of a young woman...

_When Zuko fights someone, he remember it. The first time he fights Zhao, he's fresh, and he almost loses the Agni Kai. At the end of the first season at the North Pole, Zuko thrashes Zhao, despite being in rather... _poor_ condition. Every time he fights Azula he tends to do just a little better. So when Zuko used the fire whips in Crossroads of Destiny it immediately reminded me of waterbending, and of Iroh's lessons on adapting the four elements. Yes the Fire Nation circus that Ty Lee belonged to also made use of of the whips, but Zuko never uses them until CoD despite their evident effectiveness. He never really had an opportunity to visit the circus while acting as a refugee, so where did he learn it? I figured he must have been mimicking Katara, or at least another waterbender, especially since it's the first time we see him seriously firebending since Iroh gave him the lecture on adapting fire with water. In this chapter Katara was inspiring Zuko through his memories of how she fights, resulting in a unusual firebending form.  
_


	3. Practice

**Practice**

Zuko needed to focus on the fight, on winning, but he couldn't help but realize how far Katara had come. In a month, the thought came unbidden, one month, Katara had become a master waterbender. She didn't just know the forms, she understood them as intricately as any ship engineer understood the engine, each and ever component and its purpose. The forms themselves became more of an afterthought, they were not the extent of her knowledge but rather the product of it. The thought scared him, that he was facing someone with that kind of potential, someone whom had come even farther _since_ that one month.

How many years had it taken him to learn, what she had done all along? How many times had he tried to move on to more advanced techniques before comprehending the basics that were the foundation for those very techniques? It wasn't like she was a prodigy, not the way Azula was. No, Katara was nothing at all like his sister. He'd seen her attempts to learn her element as he'd chased the Avatar from one end of the world to the other. She'd been terrible, at first, she'd struggled and failed; Azula almost never struggled and most certainly never failed.

She managed to learn on her own what many masters spent years trying to teach their students, including him, because she didn't have a choice. She had to learn, and she had to learn from whatever source she could. She studied, and tried, and failed, and tried again until she got it right, and then she just kept trying. Executing the move properly, perfectly, was not enough for her, and it's not enough to make one a master. Understanding the difference between the executions, the knowledge of all the working components, made the master. Katara knew this, and Zuko knew this now too_,_ from watching her, from fighting her.

She'd meticulously dissected every lesson she was taught, taking each and every scrap of knowledge, of technique, she could glean with her. She would attend a lesson fully knowledgeable of everything that would be taught, because she'd already pieced it together with what she had., and still she would pay attention, to refine her skill, her art. Had she became a master in the month between when Zuko had lost track of the Avatar, and when he had infiltrated the North Pole? Before he might have believed that, but now he doubted that. In his present opinion she was, at heart, a master long before she even found a teacher. He wouldn't even have been surprised if by the end of the second week she'd learned enough to dreeze each and every one of her fellow students, ones that had studied for months and years, not days and weeks, up to their heads in ice. Anything past that, she was just refining herself, as a master always does, before every fight, after every fight, and even during every fight.

He could see it now, even if she wasn't consciously aware she was doing it. Adjusting her step, changing the pitch of her attacks just slightly, just enough to maybe catch him off guard. It didn't. He could read her clearly, and in turn adjusted himself accordingly. He could see it in her eyes, the same look he was sure she was seeing in his own, that she was reading him _just_ as clearly. Terrifying, and exhilarating, each drove the other to be better, to be the best. This is why Azula, the prodigy, princess of the Fire Nation, had nearly lost to Katara, to a waterbending peasant. Azula didn't adapt, oh she would change tactics, change forms, but she would never change the techniques themselves. Every strike, every set, had to be absolutely perfect, she ahd to be perfect. If you changed something that was perfect, well then it simply wouldn't be perfect anymore, would it? So she would change tactics, and Katara would adapt just enough to throw her off her perfect rhythm, and then the peasant would thrash the princess, or would have if ZUko had not intervened.

Zuko wasn't perfect, he'd tried to be, oh he had tried so hard to be, but he wasn't. Now, he accepted his faults, now he worked with and around them, where as before he might have denied even having them. If adapting meant the difference between winning and losing, life and death, fighting and giving in, he would adapt, and he would survive, because he would never ever give up, not without a fight.

"I have changed," he stated, as much an admission to himself as a deceleration to Katara.

_Katara is a fast learner, under proper guidance she was even faster than the Avatar. She was barely able to control her element at the beginning of the series, yet was a match for Zuko by the end of the season, and she's more than a match for Azula not once, but twice. That kind of improvement is bound to inspire and encourage Zuko to actually put some of the lessons Iroh'd been teaching him to use. Each of the parts was named and themed for one of the three original **Muses, Voice, Memory, **and** Practice** (I'll admit to looking that up on Wikipedia, so if the information on there is incorrect, then it's my own fault for not verifying it), and so that means this was the final one. Thanks to everyone that read, and a second thank you to anyone that reviewed. I sincerely hope to have the first chapter of my revised Setting Sun: Imminent Dawn (retitled to The Thrice Traitor Prince) sometime at the end of the month, though it will be ship neutral as I don't feel like can write romance well enough to do any of the relationships justice. Thanks for reading._

_-fallendeathlord_


End file.
